By Jimi Bickersteth
An early morning fog drifted through the trees, turning the Abuja landscape cool and heavy with its dampness. Here and there, light rays splintered through its filmy web to sparkle on the dew-wet grass. It was only a matter of time before the rising sun burned off the thin layers of mist, even, as eddies of dust swirled in the road, sweeping along the streets of Lugbe with shops selling junk or overpriced imported secondhand goods.
I pondered at the State of the nation, it’s fast approaching 2023 general elections and a present ‘third force’ in a nation wallowing in unease and nostalgia, an anticlimax indeed, after all the excitement of planning the political parties primaries, the elections process and the subsequent, stimulating electioneering campaigns. The presidential election primaries had revealed a good number of anti-heroes, and one could not but laugh at the antics of this many democracy anti-heroes – characters that do not possess the qualities of courage, honesty and strength typically expected in the right places and directions.
This ‘heroes’ we’re no less different to the complicated individualss have trumped up in the nation’s elegiac settings of the last two decades. The processes and personages have combined in large measures and have wily-nily, albeit, unwittingly, placed the nation in the doghouse and pointedly, refused to agree with the notion that all politics is local, and that, the APC (2015 and 2019) had not done anything other political parties (1999, 2003, 2007, 2011 and even 2015) doesn’t do as a matter of course, and that only a properly constituted forensics assizes could see through the charade, if it was one. Justice, afterall is an important element of good government.
The opposition, the presence of the third force, an unstable $# exchange rate, the glut in the world crude oil market and a general, global economic downturn that has occasioned majority of our compatriot going to bed and dying in hunger and suffering have surreptitiously, further compounded the nation’s unease, looking helpless and teetering in a damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don’t situation. Well, that was a digression from my theme for a moment.
Thinking of or about the state of the nation really exposed the elemental fury of the storm, the unease, the peoples anti-heroes, the nation’s feelings, its peace, and all, in the light of the monotonous runs of the nation’s democracy this last two decades, and climaxed with the 2019 elections, where the nation’s politicians displayed with no let, that the force that drove ambitions could easily suppress their humanity.
The politicians without exception, showcased that ambitions and hunger for power had made them invulnerable to human concerns about peace, progress, well being and tranquility. A confirmation of Freud’s view of man as a grasping creation dominated by base instincts, seeing Man simply as an animal responding mechanistically to environmental stimuli.
Yes, the quest and urge for power and life ambitions are made of dreams. Dreams! Shakespeare said was made of “sterner stuff”. In the nation’s politics, there had to be more than dreams. The politicians, of course, live in a dream world and a state in which they imagine everything is the way they would like it to be. But, even, in their dreams, there had to be more you can do with the people than sponsoring hate, lies, suspicion and resentment, to achieve your goals and dreams, the elements that had got the people busy venting their spleen on one another, establishments and institutions to show their discontent and displeasure.
The people in whom love is inborn and who find self-realization in contributing to the good of society are been gradually reduced to live in a divisive environment of the land owners and the land keepers, and have been left marinating in the gall of bitterness, as the politicians bred suspicions and feelings of deep-seated resentment at, of and over the way they had been collectively and individually treated by the powers-that-be and Politicians generally; and like a beach ball the nation try to submerged. It pops up, splashing everyone in speeches and language that evoked echoes of the nation’s past. In other instances, they were speechless with fury and no shelter from the fury of the storm and making a brave fist of appearing friendly.
The politicians spoilt the people with their dollars and naira, even as they polarized them along ethnic lines. I remembered an old line I saw somewhere, I can’t remember where now, ‘Money can do everything.’ In the last election, one could say, it, to some extent did, and it didn’t. Of course, quite a large number of the people deified some aspirants and their money. It showed that in the nation’s politics money was the end, it was the means. Majority of the other people were afraid of the politicians reputation, of the things people whispered that they did. Whether they did them or didn’t do them was not important. The fact remains that the people believed they did them and wanted a share of the booty.
In the present throes of the 2023 presidential election campaigns, the politicians at the marketplace of ideas have began to display the innate sense of hunger for power but not much common sense. Their carriage was that of most entrepreneurs who reaching a point where they are ready for harvesting from their investment. Hence, the election was going to be war. War, power, money. The politics of the last two decades and particularly at the 2019 elections and its aftermath showed clearly that there were wide differences between the people that they were less willing to admit; but rather wish away while always skirting the border of propriety. Today, with fear in the hearts and eyes of the people, it’s beginning to appear coarse, intimidating and frightening. Who cares about propriety and outward appearances when you are dying of hunger and marginalisation, and the danger of anarchy, insecurity and chaos.
A situation thus ensued where the nation and its people and its political class have all developed an incurable knack for power and pretensions that were making them less human, and in fact, phony sometimes. How do one explain,
i. the blatant disregard and disrespect for human life and dignity.
ii. the knowledge that the politicians and their ‘friends’ cornered the commonwealth while the rest of the people were sitting on nothing but red clay. Yet, that, little trick of fate would not deter the people from,
a. falling head over heels for the politicians, and,
b. in spite of their brains and guile, from noise making or making noise over nothing.
The PHCN struck and the room suddenly went dark, the nation glum, its politicians unsure, there was uncertainty about, everything was a white Cameo in the darkness. Abuja was bathed in a layer of light rain of the early afternoon, in a nation where the people could hardly lapse into the patois of their origins. The last elections was like war. War between brothers. All kind of a pair, actually with lots of polish on the surface – but there was dust from the chicken yard between their toes. Some hummed, if we don’t like the rules we’ll take our ball to another playground, an attitude that had made the nation a ‘disposable society’; whatever ‘we’ couldn’t get ‘we’ll’ look for somewhere else.
With no ideals, no principles, tragically the mentality is transferred to the people; with each generation becoming less likely to be tolerant, selfless, patient, flexible and creative, and more likely to trade in what they were unwilling to work on. The myth of the merry-go-round tells that the nation was due to have to grapple with its political issues. Just replace it!
The people with a blend of irritation and contrition tried to be as bold as their politicians, though shaking impeccably at their money and everyone having their turn at the trough, knowing full well that it was an understatement that the politicians motives and appearances were deceiving. In retrospect, the nation’s politics was bizzare politics, and
quite bizzare for all the wrong reasons. What with the usual jealousies, mutual suspicions, bitterness and hostile resentment, those symbiotic things that make sense only at some deep level that nobody understands, not even the politicians. All of which drove a wedge between the people.
There evidently was perverseness in the nation’s relationships and ‘handshakes across the Niger’, with its politicians – as though they managed to bring out the worst in the people and in themselves, instead of everyone’s best. The threat of ”takeover Lagos”, “…have their nation back”, the youths are angry and hungry…” The politicians goad the nation on the path of life as consisting of either eating or shitting. At the thought, though the room was warm, I felt a chill run over my skin, and every hair on my body seemed on end.
The 2023 electioneering campaigns, body language, and utterances thereof, has brought to the fore and in no small measure the political and ethnoreligious configuration of the nation as an obstacle that was literally an ocean away at the moment, one that could be dealt with later without sacrificing the peace of the nation; a nation whose beauty and radiance captivated the heart of all.
The campaigns had been a stimulating adventure for politicians looking for something that made some physical demands and often less confinement, and those on the losing sides were pretending to be scandalised to cover envy and wounded egos, and were threatening brimstones with a lightness in their voices that didn’t match the heady tension that throbbed in the land. I can not make it louder than this.
Some lips curled up in amused scorn and ‘èrin ìyàngí’- scornful laughter. With their weak disposition and combativeness looking every inch far away from integrity, honesty and charming men who couldn’t conduct themselves as proper gentlemen. Those smiles that creased and twisted their mouths weren’t kind. Something other than the outcome of the polls must be at the core of it. Something related to the patent dishonesty all around, and trust issues. How? Why? Ah, well! One has to keep the analysis in check, realizing that it was quite obviously something the politicians don’t want to discuss either in private or public, but they are there, and there they are.
I sat back and picked up the hand fan, the motion of the fan quickened to a rapid tempo and I even waved the fan with more vigour. Gracious, it has turned hot and sticky. Whatever became of that breeze one enjoyed earlier. I peered out as if expecting to find it, then paused, stilling the fan motion. With the heat of the afternoon, I dabbed my forehead with my shirt sleeve. High on the branch of a Neem tree, a mockingbird trilled its repertoire of songs. It brought a picture of the nation’s politicians lacking in compelling honesty and crooked in both their feelings and manners, facing a corrupt system. How very naive, the refrain that corruption will always exist. It can never be stamped out completely and entirely. That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be fought wherever it was found.
Pacing back and forth, the nation was on edge and pushed by the rawness of anger and pain at the politicians, none of who care anything about the distress the nation was in via their divisive tendencies at a time most of the politicians had their heads resting in their hands in a pose of weariness and defeat. You can’t buy pride and integrity. The person commands them, not the price.
The people know what would happen to a country when gangsters take over. Since the politicians had been recognized for what they were, the people are poised to stop them with bridges made of their bodies, of their determination. When the man in the street decides you are not good for him, he’ll stop you. No matter what you do, to prevent him from doing it, he will find a way. You can’t be strong enough or smart enough to beat the man in the street – hungry and poor and miserable most of whom were living on some job that barely gave them an existence and which the fear of losing hung continually over their heads like a sword on a thread. But could not trust the political class, that includes Obi, who the ‘IPOB’ gang see as an option and veritable route to actualising the nightmarish, night-before-the-last, southeast dream.
Jimi Bickersteth is a blogger and writer and can be reached at jimibickersteth8@gmail.com
I snatched, not a ballot box, but a throw pillow from the sofa and crushed it in both of my hands, my fingers curling into its plumpness, the way the politicians were clutching to the nation’s resources. While surreptitiously sponsoring and preaching hate. The portrayal of the nation’s harsher realities of life, as may be, hatred was an ugly thing.
The politicians may say of a companion one day that he hates so and so, and the next: He is my friend. This was one of the ways of friendship, and just as real as amiability or being alike. That is how a relationship is, shifting and changing and are kept by the fabric of social life, devoid of principle. Which was bad for the nation, for its evolution and deepening of its democracy. And now it was affective of the permanent feature of the nation’s ethos and character.
It had started out small, as a little seed of resentment that is held close and fed with bitter thoughts. It puts down roots and grew. The more years it’s nourished by the politicians, the bigger it grew the fiercest it became; until brothers are blinded by it – until all they can see, hear and feel was nothing but hatred. Whether this strategy worked for them was a matter for another day. Whether the approach would work is a matter for next year.
The strategam had been fueled by the politicians unnecessary duplicity of pendantory in the face of guilt and compounded by society’s inability to move them along the the path and direction that questions the nation’s politicians moral rectitude and fibre; this had cast stains and brazen disregard for the societal etiquette and sense of goodness, right and justice and well being.
In that mood of mutual exclusivity and mutually obstinate disaffection, and without allowing the people’s anger to dictate the politicians actions, both the scandalous recklessness and obstinate disaffection know that crises and decisions faced them, as the nation was slowly beginning to separate into opposing camps, but were bonding together along old lines of feud and misunderstanding. A contradiction in terms.
The lines that had divided the philosophy and psyche of the peoples loyalty to the course, intentions and purposes of the nation’s founding fathers, who had struggled for the nation’s Independence. One sensed however, that there was more than a degree of truth in loyalty having nothing to do with being marginalized or subjugated. It’s something you give freely because it’s been earned.
A dark cloud threatening to darkened the sky. A storm was forming, in spite of the baiting gleam in the peoples eyes as always, when confronted by the undeniable sentiments, jealousies, suspicion and inherent hatred in the nation’s makeup. It painted a vivid picture. Running away isn’t being free. It’s just running, trading one life of fear for another.
Ask any lady, if you tuck the back of the skirt behind the knees when you crouch down, your dress won’t touch the dirt. If all the three in the tripod arranged the front of their skirts over the knees around the collection of marble statuary on the ground, there’ll be some sense of peace, if even, that would not guarantee its unity and peace.
War. North. South. That was all anyone talked about lately. The war is now openly one of old grudges and new sentiments. Here, one vividly remembered all too well all the threats and attempts at secession and the terrible turmoil of that time fifty-five years ago, everyone suffered dreadfully during a war.
Today, all were in any political discussion, thinly disguised venoms in the voices that are quick with opinions and combative in the defense of their beliefs, which somewhat the nation still found stimulating. The voices vibrated with the effort to keep it low – and the intensity of feelings. Though one battle does not make a war, but one battle can win a war. So, in spite of the reflecting needs and wants, some tormenting, it serves everyone’s best interest that when you have been badly burned, you’re careful about getting too close to the fire again.
The memories of the long trail, and those years of battle, bloodshed and struggle in the march towards true
nationhood – and the nation it had become, was too fresh. The pain and suffering, the deprivation and poverty, the illness and death that resulted from war, whether it was fought with rifle and sword or with lawyers and writs, cowardly or not, the devastation to a people was the same.
With the 2023 polls around the corner and the laughter and chuckles connected by the undercurrents of tension and the stilled memory of harsh words said long ago in anger in the name of politics. Even the outbreak of verbal hostilities had been granted a furlough. The nation had to find a way, even as it made overtures to the ‘Big Three’ with the hope of persuading them to make an alliance and a firm ‘handskake across the Niger’.
Jimi Bickersteth is a blogger and writer and can be reached at jimibickersteth8@gmail.com
